Watch Over Me (12 page)

“Oh. My. Goodness. This is her, isn’t it? The one they found? Janet keeps going on about it.”

“It’s her.” The woman was Janet McGee’s sister. She had come to church a few times.
Nicole . . . something.
Abbi snapped her fingers.
Nicole Webb
.

“Shanna,” Nicole said to the girl on her right—they were both girls, really, about twenty, wearing lavender glitter nail polish and dark jeans—“this is that baby in the plastic bag.”

“Really? Oh, she’s so cute. How could anyone do such a thing?”

“You’re gonna adopt her, right?” Nicole asked.

“We don’t know yet,” Abbi said.

“I hope they find those awful people who did it.” Nicole bit her thumbnail, peeled off the top. Flicked it. “They deserve to be locked away forever.”

“Where’s your daughter?” Abbi asked.

“Nursery. You want me to show you where it is? Shanna’s mother is working in there with the little ones.”

“No, she’s fine here.” Abbi dove into the questions on the registration form, simply to avoid more questions—she had no plans of turning it in. Name. Birthday. Children. Anniversary. She had to think about that one. Dates didn’t stick on her. There had been times when Benjamin woke her to breakfast in bed, and she’d look at him, mind ticking off the days of the week, until he took mercy on her and reminded her what the occasion was—if there was an occasion at all. Often there wasn’t.

She missed that.

The woman from the registration tables tapped a microphone plugged into a karaoke machine.

“Hi, and welcome, all you ladies. I see some new faces today, so if some of you old crusties see a newbie, make sure you make them feel comfy and cozy here. Okay, then, let’s open with a mighty word to our mighty God.”

The room grew silent, sacred, except for a toddler crunching Cheerios, and another saying “Ba, ba, ba, ba,” until his mother crammed a pacifier into his mouth. Then Betsy finished and introduced the guest speaker, who led the group in baby-massage techniques.

“That’s right,” the speaker said. “Massages aren’t just for you and your hubby. Babies love them, too. It’s calming for them, and it’s a bonding experience between mother and child.” She instructed everyone to take a plastic doll and a dab of oil, and practice the skills she showed them. “Don’t be shy, now, ladies. Rub, rub, rub.”

Betsy approached Abbi. “Oh, she’s fast asleep,” she said. “Why don’t you go right ahead and stick her in the nursery, so you can have your hands free.”

“I’d rather she stay with me.”

“Well, okay, then. If you change your mind, I’ll introduce you to the sweet sitters in the baby room and—”

“I already told her,” Nicole said.

“Just remember this time is for mommies, too. A little break from it all,” Betsy finished and headed to the next table to bother someone else.

After Baby Massage 101, another woman brought out canvas tote bags and glue guns. Everyone attached plastic flowers to their bags, including Abbi. As she alternated half-dollar-sized sunflower heads with umber buttons, she felt almost split in two, a meaningless craft project incompatible with the life she had at home. She looked around at the other women, wondered how many of them walked through life in halves—the public half who smiled and seemed so well-adjusted, and the private half slogging through her own personal hell.

In the car, she tossed the snood in the back seat, shook her hair loose, and rolled her pants to just below the knee. She fished her silver hoop from her bag, stuck it into her nose. She had time before Benjamin needed the car and didn’t want to be home with him for any length of time.

But if she drove past the grocery, she’d stop and buy a bottle of laxative. She’d managed to go four months without taking them to purge, and each time she started using them again she found it more difficult to stop. So she drove around while Silvia continued napping until she slowed in front of a black metal mailbox with
RIGN Y
stuck to the side in gold letters, a magnetic yellow ribbon on the top. The driveway, nearly a mile long, slanted downward to the farmhouse, and Abbi could see dark specks moving on the porch, in the front yard. One of them was Lauren, she was almost certain.

Lord, when will she forgive me?

She went in and Benjamin left. She had no clue where he was going.

Abbi put in a load of laundry, then another. She washed the kitchen floor and took frozen black beans from the freezer to defrost for dinner. Bean burritos for her, with fresh salsa. Benjamin would eat them, too, if there was nothing else. A small plastic bag of ground beef stuck out from behind the ice cube tray. She grabbed that, too, and dropped it in a pot of lukewarm water.

She prepared a bottle for Silvia and, in the bedroom, stripped off the baby’s wet diaper, cleaned her with a bamboo wipe. She looked at the tiny body, all torso and head, feet smaller than her hands. She traced the crease circling Silvia’s chubby wrist, remembering the same line on her younger brother’s, there for the longest time and then, suddenly, gone. How old had he been, then? Five, maybe six. From baby to boy overnight.

“Wait here,” she said, going to the kitchen, shuffling through the spice cabinet for the bottle of apricot oil.

She unfolded an old beach towel from the linen closet and covered the bedsheets before rolling Silvia onto it. She spilled a few beads of oil into her fingers, rubbed her hands together to warm it. Then, placing both palms on the baby’s chest, she fanned her hands up and around, making a heart shape over the rib cage. Down the arms, massaging Silvia’s palms with her thumbs. Over her legs, just beginning to plump and roll with fat.

Abbi shimmied out of her shirt, hands fisted to protect the fabric. She unclasped her bra, grabbing the baby in the armpits, laid her on her chest, skin against skin, like a mother cradled her own right after birth. She stroked Silvia’s back, listening to her coo, then fuss for lunch.

Sitting against the headboard, Abbi gathered the slippery little body against her stomach; a drop of oil tickled as it slipped into her navel. She reached for the bottle on the nightstand, turned it upside down until a globe of formula bubbled on the rubber nipple. She touched it to her breast, the white liquid quickly spreading on her skin. Silvia turned her head and latched on, suckling as Abbi continued to trickle formula down her skin, into the baby’s mouth.

The front door slammed. Abbi yanked Silvia from her breast. The baby screamed; Abbi bent over, drawing in a thick, fuzzy breath to muffle her own scream, her nipple on fire from the quick release. She heard Benjamin’s limp-run down the hallway and, rolling Silvia on the bed, managed back into her shirt before he barged through the door.

“What’s wrong? Is she okay?” he asked.

“You feed her.” Abbi shoveled the infant, now purple with confusion, to Benjamin. A dark, greasy stain appeared on his shirt. “I’m just . . . no good at it.”

She went to her studio. With a wire, she cut a slab of cured clay and smashed it onto the center of her potter’s wheel. She sat, pushed against the kick wheel, squeezed a sponge of water over the clay. Her hands slid over the mound, slick as Silvia’s oiled skin.

This she knew. What she’d felt with Silvia at her chest— No. She didn’t know that sense of motherhood, what she thought she wanted, that thing others called bonding, or love, perhaps. The baby wasn’t hers. It would be at least six months before adoption could be considered. Until then, the search for someone she belonged to— blood family, always thicker than strangers—continued. And if that someone was found, Silvia would be gone, and Abbi would feel it, like a nursing baby torn off her mother’s breast. She couldn’t go through that. She’d already lost her husband.

Chapter FIFTEEN

When he arrived at the Patil house, Matthew saw Abbi in the backyard, spreading sheets of newspaper over the ground, covering them with scraps of vegetables and fruit rinds and flower stems. She placed an unfired piece of pottery on each length of paper, rolling and securing them with copper wire.

He tapped her shoulder.
What are you doing?

“I’m prepping my pottery for firing.”

With rotting banana peels?

“Potassium can cause greenish hues on the stoneware. The other stuff will leave other colors. I hope. It’s not an exact science. It’s more of a throw-everything-in-and-see-what-happens.”

You mean in the kiln?

“I mean in the hole. Put the pots in, some wood, some manure, light it on fire, and see what happens.”

I dug the hole for you to burn garbage.

Abbi laughed. “Hey, you got paid for it, didn’t you?”

Matthew laughed, too. He liked Abbi—not old enough to parent him, not young enough to be a peer. Not familiar enough to be a sister. But she wasn’t like most people he knew, and it had nothing to do with the ink peeking from her tank top or the ring in her nose. His aunt had a couple of cheap, shaky tattoos—one on her ankle, one on her hip—and most of her boyfriends had had blue-green dragons or daggers or women on their biceps. Jaylyn pierced her navel without Heather knowing, not that his aunt cared when she found out.

Abbi seemed confident being a bit offbeat. Not in a phony I-don’t-care-what-you-think way, like his cousins or the girls at school who did outlandish things in the name of individuality while glancing over their shoulders to see who watched. Abbi didn’t hesitate to run to the store with clay in her hair, or turn handsprings in the backyard because she suddenly got the urge to. And she talked with him about things no one had spoken to him about before, asked questions as if he was her spiritual equal. Sometimes Matthew answered, and sometimes he shrugged and shook his head, but either way he enjoyed the fact that she even asked.

Can I take Silvia for a walk?

“Sure. Go ahead. It’s a great day for it. Just be back before four thirty.”

Stroller?

“We don’t have one. When I take her out, I wear her.”

Uh, no.

“Come on. You don’t have to use the girly pouch. I have something more masculine.”

???

Abbi carried Silvia, who’d been lying inside on a blanket, and said, “Ta da,” as she unrolled a long, black cloth.

I don’t get it.

“Hold her. No, against you. No. With her stomach to your chest.”

He did, and Abbi wound the fabric around him, tying it at his waist.

I feel like a mummy.

“Have a nice time, King Tut.”

Matthew walked away from the houses, out toward the farm roads, and he talked to Silvia because no one could hear him, and because he’d seen Abbi do it.

When Lacie was a baby, Heather had rarely said anything to her, didn’t do much other than stick a bottle in her mouth when she couldn’t get Skye or Jaylyn to do it. Or him. He didn’t mind. But he never understood why his aunt kept having children. He couldn’t say she didn’t care about the girls, but she didn’t act the way he thought a mother should. Not that he’d had any great example himself. It was more that he knew how mothers
shouldn’t
act, knew plenty about that. He used to think he’d set his expectations too high, wanting a Maggie Seaver or a Clair Huxtable, loving and understanding and strong, but perhaps extinct in real life. Then he saw how Abbi parented Silvia, putting her first when she didn’t feel like it—a child not even of her own flesh—and realized yes, some children honestly would rise up and call their mothers blessed.

He kissed Silvia atop her head. He was falling in love with her, too, which didn’t surprise him. Since he’d first held Lacie, he’d always imagined being a father, one who didn’t run out on his kid, leaving him with a druggie mother to face a life-threatening illness alone. Judging from the guys at school, with their rush to find someone to buy them beer on Friday nights, and their preoccupation with video games and girls, he didn’t think he’d find many people his age who thought the same way. Not that Matthew wanted a child tomorrow. If he lived that long, there was college and marriage; the former would prove easier than the latter. He couldn’t imagine anyone wanting to be his wife.

At least he couldn’t pass his disease on.

Matthew circled back to the Patil house. Abbi had put away all her newspaper-wrapped pottery.

You’re not going to fire them today?

“It’s supposed to rain tonight. Did you have a nice walk?”

He nodded.

“Hold her. I’ll unwind you.” She did, and when she lifted Silvia away from his chest, the air rushed against the slightly sweaty place the baby deserted. It almost felt as if a hole was left there, in that cooled space, and if he hadn’t been able to look down and see his T-shirt, he might have thought just that.

He felt the argument through the doorknob before he walked into the apartment, considered turning around and going—where?

Good question.

Matthew went inside. His aunt and Jaylyn were shouting at one another in the living room, ignoring him. He scooted past them and knocked twice on the girls’ closed bedroom door. Knocked twice again. His code. If someone didn’t want him to enter, she had time to let him know before he barged in. When none of the girls poked her head out to tell him to scram, he opened the door. Skye was leaning against her headboard, one foot up on the mattress as she held a nail polish brush over it. Wads of cotton puffed from between her toes. Matthew sat next to her.

What’s it about this time?

She screwed on the bottle cap. “Some deputy showed up here.”

Deputy Patil?

“No. The fat one. I guess Rebecka McClure went missing.”

What’s that have to do with any of us?

“You know how last week Becka and Jaylyn had that fight over Dan Pitts?”

He shook his head.

“Well, they did. Right outside the grocery before Jaylyn’s shift. I guess Becka was there, flirting with Dan, and Jaylyn flipped out. Becka tore out a chunk of Jaylyn’s hair.”

They actually fought, fought?